Shhhh! Don’t
Disturb the Media’s Potemkin Villages.
Potemkin Village: An impressive showy facade designed to mask undesirable facts. The semantic etymology is, according to
wordsmith,org, after Prince Grigory Potemkin, who erected cardboard villages to
fool Empress Catherine II during her visit to Ukraine and Crimea in 1787.
Earliest documented use: 1904.
Yesterday,
August 8th, nearly 5000 participants and supporting crowds attended
a very loud demonstration outside the Palmer House in Chicago to protest the
existence and membership of the American Legislative Exchange Council.
What was in the
beginning a smaller group of union activists quickly spread by 11:45 a.m. into an
almost a full-block line snaking around three sides of the famed hotel; people
carrying picket signs, blowing whistles, and jeering against the Koch-brother
think tank which writes and promotes legislation like the infamous Stand Your
Ground laws in Florida and many other states.
Shortly after
noon, the Chicago police found it necessary to block off traffic on Monroe Street
to accommodate the swelling crowds and provide for pedestrian traffic across
the street. The event was punctuated
with several speakers from AFSCME, various labor unions, and the Reverend Jesse
Jackson.
But you won’t
read about it in your Tribune. Or hear
about it, except in a fleeting ten second reference on ABC televised news. Shhhhhh!
The mainstream
media did not cover the event. Just like
other events they choose to avoid.
Last night, Bruce
Dold, Tribune editorial board leader, appeared once again on WTTW’s Chicago
Tonight to discuss the possible intrigues in the Madigan family and his hope
that “pension reform” (a euphemism for the reneging of contractual promises to
state workers in order to pay back what was stolen from them by the General
Assembly over decades) would carry on. An equally perturbed Natasha Korecki from the
Sun Times joined him. They lamented the
possible Madigan family feud, the issues with Metra, whether Lisa Madigan will
run for office, the field of possible Illinois governors-to-be.
But the ALEC
demonstration? Shhhhhh!
How about the three-year
$20 million no-bid contract for principal development provided Barbara Byrd-Bennet’s
past consulting group for the CPS? Shhhh!
And what about the
egregious boast by business leader Ty Fahner of the Civic Committee of the
Commercial Club of Chicago that he and his cronies had effectively raised the
rates of borrowing for the state of Illinois by forcing a downgrading of bond
ratings? This, by the way, will cost
taxpayers an additional $130 million for one single bond issue. Shhhhhh!
(http://teacherpoetmusicianglenbrown.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-video-segment-of-ty-fahner-talking.html)
You’ll have to
take the word of the alternate news sources in Chicago, the ones uncontaminated
by Sam Zell and the new business model.
But I know one
thing. Thousands of regular people
gathered on the street in front of the Palmer House, and not inside designing
new laws to privatize education, prevent a living wage, undermine advances in
environmental protections, and other legislative obscenities.
It happened, no
matter what you don’t hear or can’t read.
And as the
people on the street chanted: Shhhhh-ame.
Shame.
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